War on drugs in a third world shithole? lol

lol

Have you met any Carthaginians?

Hell no.

Short of indiscriminate mass slaughter (and I like to hope we’re not a nation of evil, genocidal cocksuckers), there is no solution to this problem, including legalization. The top five cartels in Mexico make as much as the top 5 “Big pharma” companies. It’s just too much money, and the cartels have an endless supply of slave labor.

Mexico and Central America are a far deeper quagmire than Iraq/Afghanistan, and right on our doorstep.

As for the “conquer ‘em and take over” crowd - you bitch about <20 million of them, now you want to babysit 130 million?

No, it would be a fucking mess that would make Vietnam look like a walk in the park.

#BuildtheDamnWall

If not a physical wall, mine the border and reinforce that with armor, gunships, A-10's and anything else that will fuck shit up RFN!

Fuck your mines. Mine your backyard first.

The US military is an excellent fighting force, and a relatively poor local police force.  It excels at blowing shit up and killing enemy combatants.

It suxs at domestic police efforts in foreign countries.   Horrible.  We don't know/understand the culture, the local people or the history.

At best, using a large scale US military force to "stabilize" Mexico would result in a long running G warfare campaign.  A campaign designed to bleed the US (money and people) while making us look like foreign dictators and tyrants when the inevitable "outrages" are published in real time on the web.

Meanwhile, Econ 101 remains a cold F'ing bitch.  Limitations on supply increase prices.  So, more profits for the traffickers.  Profits they can pour into a G campaign and/or developing other trafficking routes/techniques.

The only thing more stupid that continuing to waste billions on the war on drugs is doubling down by spending even more in dollars and lives invading a foreign country to interdict supply.

I'm not sure if building a partitioning wall approximately just below Mexico City (it would be much shorter and easier to defend) and stabilization/decartelization of Northern Mexico via Joint Mexico/US task force wouldn't be the most efficient thing to do.   You have to root out the crooked cops, politicians, and military, as well as the cartels, so the Mexicans can go back to running their own country.  The average Mexican hates the cartels and crooks as we do - given a chance to establish a safe corruption free zone of significant size - I'm convinced they will clean up their own country.  They need laws that puts taking bribes on the same level as murder and rape, and they need to carry out the sentences.  
Unfortunately - it may take our help to clean house if it's ever to get sorted out.  Mexico may need to start hanging criminals by the hundreds.  Not easy by any means for anyone.
The other answer is taking over and replacing their whole mess of a political/judicial system.  (I hate to say it but we are pretty good at setting up lasting governments in our wake.)

The only way to stabilize it would be to kill everyone. Kind of like the Mideast.

Trump administration nearing deal with Mexico on revised NAFTA — but issues with Canada remain

No.

but, theoretically, we are a borderless world. So running ops to kill off cartels might not be such a big thing. Turn all of the IC surveillance shit on the cartels.

If we occupy them like Iraq and Afghanistan. No. Like Germany and Japan. Yes.

Completely break them down, loose ROEs for our troops, and a "no holds bar" attitude towards the population and the resistance. We can rebuild them.

But a successful and stable Mexico is not good for the US.

20% of the population

1. Drop Rainbow 6 in to reak havoc. OR 2. Overthrow their government. Install a man similiar to Pinochet to take out the trash. OR 3. Build the fucking wall.

QFT

You want to use our military to fight what we created and control?
Why not just change our policy?  Do you think Martians created these problems?

Who cares?

Neutron bombs, judiciously applied VX and nukes would be needed to ensure victory........becuse we want total and complete victory right?

No, not in any circumstances in this timeline.

This, if we took the gloves off i have no doubt our military could get the job done.

If the goal were to exterminate people, we could do it.  If the goal is to play police, it would be a shitshow of epic proportions.

I would prefer we unfuck this country.
Hunt down and destroy criminal gangs, rid the country of commies would be a good start.

Fixed it

Africa too.

It would be hard. You would have to get rid of the whole goverment and install our own. Do it like hong kong and the british. Take it over

Fuck no!  The cartels could bring a level of violence, pain, and suffering that ISIS and Al Qaeda can't even dream about.  All they have to do is want it.  Their organizations are here.  Their people are here.  Their money is here.  All of it integrated into America.  Should they want to, they could bring the US to it's knees in a couple of days.

Colonialism only works if you have enough Irish, Poles, Germanics etc...to displace the problematic native population.  It is no longer an option, due to demographics.

If we adopted the Rules of Engagement last used by Ghengis Khan and conducted high intensity operations making liberal use of our bomber fleet against cartel held territory and possessions,  yes.

It's virtually a given that any Mexican politicians who have not been kidnapped are on the take, even if it's simply a means of survival.    So the entire Mexican government would also have to be eliminated, root and branch.

The place is a dumpster fire.  We just need to declare it an enemy nation, end all trade,  suspend all travel to and from,  and build an epic Chinese style Great Wall between them and us,  backed up with extensive mine fields, automatic defenses, and roving patrols with orders to shoot all invaders on sight.

And along the way, tell the Mexican people that this will be the state of affairs until they have utterly eliminated the cartels by their own hand.

Yeah, the idea of nation building and such with such a backward population is a recipe for fail.  As I mentioned earlier, strategic targets along the lines of cutting off the head of the snake by operatives that are basically invisible amongst the population would be more effective.  When one head gets lopped off and other pops up...lop it off.

"Murder", some bleeding hearts would scream.  In my scenario this would be a real "war" against criminals who are often worse and more dangerous than many true battlefield enemies.  If it requires some kind of presidential/congressional authorization, so be it.  Likely to happen?...highly doubtful in this nation right now with swamp creatures everywhere.

Let's be truthful here.  We're having more of a mental exercise here than a true application of policy and/or force...at least for the moment.  I think it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Mexico could fall so far beyond the status of a remotely reasonable nation that it might have to be dealt with much like an ISIS caliphate.  Hopefully not, but...

As I mentioned earlier, strategic targets along the lines of cutting off the head of the snake by operatives that are basically invisible amongst the population would be more effective. When one head gets lopped off and other pops up...lop it off.

The cartels have a bigger budget, a longer time line, no rules of engagement, little or nothing to lose, and very often, the support of the local population.  So, a bunch of the folks getting their head lopped off will be our forces.

Invisible among the local population?  No one is invisible to the local population in the fields, at the coke/heroin refining camps, the meth factories, or at the air fields/transshipment locations.  Instead, the cartel basically knows everyone at those locations, including their families.

Meanwhile, the cartels can and will bring the fight to our turf.   Now, that is where folks will be invisible because a decent percentage of the people involved in the US look/act like Americans.  Because they are just that, Americans.  So, we will have to turn this place into a police state.

In my entirely unqualified opinion, it would probably be like Iraq with more tacos. You aren't going to fix that place unless it wants to be fixed.

The cartels already make a large amount of ,money on human trafficking, protection rackets, and by owning other legitimate businesses. Cutting off their drug profits at this point wouldn't do much, imo. They'd further evolve. They already act as smaller imperialistic countries within regions of Mexico.

The whole "muh war on drugs" is the rally cry of the uninformed.

Could the military go in there and eradicate the cartel? Sure. It would require gumption that the left would not allow though.

We should have an insane border that works in conjunction with kill teams operated by special forces. Intelligence identifies particularly dangerous cartel members affecting the us? They disappear.

Your waaaaaaaaaaaayyyy overestimating their actual strength and reach.

We also have the option of turning PMCs loose in mexico.......executive outcomes on steroids

This, and directly below, regarding culture issues.

Without being hamstrung, and not getting pulled out halfway by limp dick politicians taking bribes from the cartels, yeah, the military could easily schwack the cartels, the mexican military, and the police forces.

Otherwise... The peoblem is twofold; A) Keeping the cartels from getting into the US and terrorizing the populace, torturing citizens to get the prickless politicians and liberals to pull the military out.

B) It's a war of occupation and re-education. It would be very expensive and take a long time, probably two decades altogether. We'd have to do it like we did with japan, or very aggressively colonize and Americanize the entire country, annexing Mexico and establishing a new US border.

We could do so, and appropriate any valuable raw materials, rare earth elements, munitions, oil, precious metals, etc. that we can. That's the only way to come out ahead after the military and rebuilding expenses.

The real problem is keeping the limp dick, slack-jawed hippy faggots in congress of fucking taxpayers after the invasion, pulling out the military and trying to sabotage the border, inciting illegals and cartel right into the US to extract revenge.

It would be IRAQ.

But in Spanish

Explosive Chanclas flying everywhere.

No.

Best way to stabilize it is to legalize drugs.  Then create factories and farms and put them all to work.

>Legalize drugs in the United States.

>Air Support should be provided to Mexican military during anti-cartel operations. A bill will be provided to the Mexican government for all flight time and munitions spent.

>extreme vetting process to narrow down a group of Mexican officers and enlisted who will volunteer for extensive training by ODAs. This group will form the core of a localized force targeting cartels.

>targeted assassinations against corrupt Mexican military and political personnel and their families.

>Batt and Delta conducting raids against cartel leadership and narco-manufacturing locations. KILL/ NO CAPTURE.

>US navy conducting coastal blockade and conducting search/seizure on ships attempting to import methamphetamine precursor chemicals and fentanyl.

The problem with Mexico is that it is full of Mexicans.

I'm OK with this, provided someone like Trump is in power.  Yes, they would wreak havoc along the border and in sanctuary cities, but that would be a valuable wake-up call for America.  After a couple of days, military, all levels of law enforcement, and every straight up American patriot would bring pain down on them like never imagined.  Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.  Hell with the status quo, let's shake things up and see how it goes when the crap gets into the rotating blades.

Dude, we cannot even fix the backwards ass shit hole of Afghanistan.

This.  Plus, physical and electronic border walls, backed up by ridiculous overkill firepower.   Nothing comes in from Mexico, period.  The only outgoing traffic is military forces on their way to deliver ordnance to targets south of the border.

We have such a great record nation building.....why not?

I swear.

Secure the border, protect it with deadly force, and make drug smuggling and dealing over a certain amount a capital crime.

Declaration of War

legalize drugs and it will end all of the cartel violence.

Simply put the answer would be no. Fighting a war on our border would be disastrous because there would be a MASS exodus and we be forced to accept millions as "refugees" and the underlying problems would still be there. Mexico isn't producing the majority of drugs that are fueling the narco war. Bolivia and Columbia are and they are being trafficked by Mexicans and through Mexico. The cartels make money from said drugs, and grease the wheels from everyone from local cops to parliament. The military is very infected by cartel men so much so that the Marines are the only ones that are trusted enough to actually do raids because they were largely ignored by the infiltration. The problem is everyone in Mexico is profiting in some way by the drug trade and it's more beneficial to them to keep the powder rolling then take a stand against it.

We could crush Mexico militarily in a week. The problem is the rest of the world would be against us, the Southern American shit holes would rally around Mexico, the Liberal populace would view it as "racially motivated war" and rally against us and no one would want to do what would be necessary to win.

The only way I see this ever ending is if we rob the shit out of the cartels. I mean we pillage them like mother fucking Vikings. Send small SF teams down there, on straight up assassination missions to target the cartels, and at the same time we plunder all the banks that hold cartel money and seize as much of the physical cash as possible. We use the proceeds to build a massive wall, that's state of the art with underground sensors and motion detectors, and then start punishing the shit out of American companys that hire illegals and start heavily taxing all money going south of the border, and start taxing the ever living shit out of US company's that are in Mexico. Cut all economic charity BS and stop giving them a penny.

With the populace stuck in Mexico, the money from family in the US drying up and the Cartels going broke and fracturing the general populace would revolt against a corrupt government that has screwed them over for years. With most of the country out of work, and people going hungry they would probably finally realize that the only reason the survive is because of us. They don't produce shit, they don't have infrastructure and they don't have any real jobs. They would either figure it out or they would become the most unstable fractured shit hole not in Africa.

But it would take a fucking terrible terrorist attack, perpetuated by the Cartels and directly financed by them, with their men and Mexican Military ordnance to actually give the Government the stones to do what they should already be doing.

So, you're saying we have no "operatives" that would be capable of a reasonable level of "blending in"?  I personally know a few who don't look like a blond, Malibu Ken.

Aside from that, your mention of "the fields" and "refining camps" apparently envisions these operatives I speak of trying to get inside and/or at least close enough to be engaged.  In those cases we could observe most of that part of large operations with drones and satellite.

Remember...In my scenario I said we're at war, so we aren't going to try and follow some Mrs. Manners style of engagement.  Those operations you speak of at that level will get one of the various air strike options available to us rather than men on the ground in direct engagement...except possibly for some type of "mop up".

"Oh my!"...the tenderhearted on the left would cry..."killing those poor workers!"  Well, real wars involve some collateral damage whatever you do.  The alternative...nuking the whole country which even I would find repulsive and despicable.  My take is to keep this operation streamlined and compartmentalized...as much as possible.  Limit our losses and exposure.

We shouldn't be trying to take over Mexico...just remove some cancer so decent citizens...if any exist...might be able to run their own country.  None of this formal military presence, nation building, or other social endeavors.

In my fictional, change-the-world-for-the-better scenario, me and Tom Clancy would rule...except he's dead.